Waterflood management using two-stage optimization with streamline simulation

Waterflooding is a common secondary oil recovery process. Performance of waterfloods in mature fields with a significant number of wells can be improved with minimal infrastructure investment by optimizing injection/production rates of individual wells. However, a major bottleneck in the optimization framework is the large number of reservoir flow simulations often required. In this work, we propose a new method based on streamline-derived information that significantly reduces these computational costs in addition to making use of the computational efficiency of streamline simulation itself. We seek to maximize the long-term net present value of a waterflood by determining optimal individual well rates, given an expected albeit uncertain oil price and a total fluid injection volume. We approach the optimization problem by decomposing it into two stages which can be implemented in a computationally efficient manner. We show that the two-stage streamline-based optimization approach can be an effective technique when applied to reservoirs with a large number of wells in need of an efficient waterflooding strategy over a 5 to 15-year period. © 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland.